Not trying to jinx it or anything, but this feels like a prime moment for the villainess system to pop back up again.

One does not often see guardian angels with tongue piercings. The rest of her eclectic style aside, the stylized eye tattoos around the neck isn't something I recall seeing elsewhere, so that's neat.

Also, that one panel: "And the world?" "Chaos." feels like it'd make a good profile pic.

Chapter 7 is really cute. Koharu and Kanna are cuties. Wonder about that cupid dude and if Kanna will explain more about cupid world. Chiyo is so spicy lol

Also, this chapter somehow hints more about the possibility (theory)of Kanna being Koharu and Aki's cupid before the accident happened. Like how she was supposed to make Koharu consider Aki's feeling more and developing it into crush when Aki confessed to Koharu.

I had not considered that, but now you've brought it up, it would make sense. Chiyo's primary characterization of Kanna in the little we've seen thus far is that she was a 'lazy cupid' and the seeming diligence and willingness to stand up and fight are new. What if... she was assigned Koharu's file but instead of acting on it noticed that she was good at matchmaking. So then she could just let Koharu do the work, and simply pop the couples she created, thereby reaping the benefit with little effort (assuming of course, there were bounties on her classmates). If Koharu herself got in a relationship, she'd be less inclined toward matchmaking others as there would be a major draw on her time and attention. But it's fine! She's young, and Kanna will get around to shooting her eventually, right? Then she dies without knowing love, all because Kanna was being lazy. That would be exactly the kind of thing that would prompt the sort of all-in behaviour she's shown thus far. It would also explain why Kanna knew all about Koharu from the moment she woke up, if she'd been lurking around her before she died. In that scenario, Kanna's expression in the top half of page 12 isn't just sympathy or consideration toward her kohai, it's guilt.

Granted, there's a fair bit of supposition there. Could be that new cupids are normally assigned mentors to ease them into things, since the goddess of love sure didn't bother to, and that those assigned mentors are just given a dossier on the cupid-to-be to help facilitate that. I hope we'll get to find out.

"Now kiss, that's an order."

-blank faced nod- "Well, you heard her."

-angry cat noises-

The rifle could just be a high enough caliber (or higher power ammo) that it has more kick despite its increase in mass. Might not be obvious in the art, but I'm more than willing to accept a handwave on magic cupid guns.

The love uzi on the other hand is clearly for drive-bys flybys. As for why a cupid would need to, maybe they took a job in another cupid's turf and want to get in and out quick. Which brings to mind the base reason for the cool armaments: They're not needed for shooting the entirely unaware mortals, but the result of an arms race between competing cupids. It seems fair to reason that more sophisticated and effective weaponry will cost more karma credits to buy, and if the goal of cupiding is at least for most to fill the gauge and go back to mortality, then the ideal would be to stick with a basic handgun to save credits and therefore time.

Unless the author intends to dump a twist on us like 'oh, and also cupids have to fend off other-dimensional invaders who feed on humanity's very capacity to love' the only reason the cupids have the fancy guns is for inter-cupid conflict over the open bounty system. Which is curious, for a system created by a goddess. One might even say it's inefficient. On the other hand, the collateral damage from cupids spraying bullets at one another does add an element of randomness to the process of love that would be absent if they all were as thoughtful and diligent as Koharu. It also would imply things were notably less random in the old bow-only days before love grenade launchers and LMGs though.

Still curious about the mechanics of the reincarnation, though I doubt it'll ever take center stage. Also curious why Kanna is so all-in on helping Koharu speedrun through cupiding. Like, being a mentor and giving her a squad to join at least starting out seems sensible, or even generous to help her learn the ropes. But going full on 'I'll buy all your ammo and when you're done I'll help you fall in love' feels like a step or five past just being nice to the rookie.

Edit: (in retrospect, Kanna does outright say that she'd be able to reunite with friends and family if she goes back, which isn't something she could do as an identical stranger. So it'd have to be full on retconning the timeline so the accident left her in a coma instead of dead, wouldn't it? I don't see another way to make sense without rolling back time and therefore undoing her work as a cupid. (oooh, there's a thought for the finale, Aki and her new GF go to visit coma-Koharu in the altered timeline, and that's when she wakes up.)

last edited at Sep 27, 2024 2:45AM

I can't help but be amused a bit that Yori, despite wrestling with the notion of robot personhood, not only doesn't consider taking the money and running, she doesn't even feel right about using some of Coco's inheritance for herself when legally speaking, nothing would stop her from doing either. Part of that could be out of gratitude for the dead master, but given how little he figures into things that's a minor influence at most.

It really comes across that she knew all along in her heart what the truth of the matter was, but hadn't quite squared it in her mind against society insisting that Coco is just a toaster.

"What is a newspaper?" throws sake cup "A miserable pile of gossip!"

last edited at Sep 17, 2024 10:51PM

To me the dead look to Miorine's eyes here look less like 'missing the wife because I'm away on business' and more 'missing the wife because she died young'. Especially with the smoking. I feel like if Suletta were still around, she'd have gotten Mio to quit.

My guess is classic villain stuff. Swap in with the adjacent royalty and then guide that country to strike down the people in her home country whom she has a grudge against, all from a position of privilege and with beauty unmarred. But swapping into a magic-less body is the kind of twist she couldn't see coming. The girl's from nobility, and expected to do a fancy mystic rite, how could she possibly have no magic at all! And thus why she's gone listless when the story cut to her. Without magic I don't think she has any leverage over that cold eyed prince, nor can she bail. All she's got is the presumably still soulbound dragon. Which, wicked witch that she was, may have been forced into things in the first place, and if so is probably chafing now she's powerless.

Basically, Aya had regarded the record store as 'their' place, a space in which she and Koga could appreciate music uninhibited and the latter could dress and act how she preferred. Koga has been being more open with such things in school, and so didn't really think much of sharing that space with the sudden tide of girls *wanting to be her friend (*read: swooning over her). It's a pretty standard jealously thing. She already had competition for Koga at school, now she'll be having competition at the record store. No one likes having to strike down interlopers making moves on their oblivious crush 24/7.

Duplicate of https://dynasty-scans.com/images/25711?tag_id=16944, without much difference. Well besides 'heat of the drink'. Don't think I've ever seen that before.

Honestly this mostly stuck out to me as euthanasia commentary, with dashes of yuri and sci-fi handwavery.

I know Jiang is supposed to be this flawlessly competent person, but how do you end up in a director position when you're this bad at reading the room and can't even empathize with people at a cognitive level.

I hope she gets an arc that explores her past and explains why her entire childhood seems to be memory-holed cuz barely having any memory of your friends or what your school life was like is not normal and makes me think she had some traumatic stuff happening in the background. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and her being clueless is just a funny and interesting way to create conflict.

I feel like part of it is that she is naturally predisposed to the sort of disposition she ended up with, but this bit that went into her childhood already really pushed her into it.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/my_dearest_nemesis_ch09#9

The thing with memory, for most people, is that it's usually inextricably tied to emotions. People tend to be better at recalling vibes, or at least how they felt than specific details, and those details tend to get fuzzier as time passes. And what are the things that provoke the largest emotional responses? Things we care about, things we are already emotionally invested in. Very simply, the things we don't care about or recognize as significant are the first things to be forgotten. So what happens when someone is primed to view people as a whole as largely interchangeable and ephemeral, as things that aren't worth investing time and feelings in from a very young age? You get Jiang as she is now. As far as she's concerned, her entire time in school was just her learning and maybe there were some people in the background while she was doing that.

And even then, I feel like she wouldn't have ended up in quite this state if not for Xu Qi latching onto her and making sure to alienate anyone who tried to get close to the brainy person she was leeching off
(she also seems to get a kick out of the act of driving wedges between people)

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/my_dearest_nemesis_ch11#8

Besides the well established bit with Shen, this page mentions ""friends"" and includes a different but completely faceless and therefore forgotten other girl whom I'm interpreting as someone else who tried to bridge the gap to Jiang despite her apparent coldness.

And Jiang isn't completely lacking in empathy, she just has some glaring blind spots. Basically, she has lived her life without attachment to people, and therefore fails to grasp when other people are attached to people. The completely cold, 'rational' thing to do if people are making you feel bad (whether by exclusion or whatever else) is to find other people. Jiang isn't grasping that it isn't the what so much as the who that really stung Shen at the time, or that other people who are emotionally invested in people can't or won't just walk away at the first notable set-back. But in the present she does pick up on the fact something she just said upset Shen in a major way, and so she tries to make up for it. But socially stunted as she is, she's only got one card to play.

I get that it isn't about Suwako and they had to do something to keep the final fight with the two principle characters, but it's still kinda eh her most prominent role here was to get bodied completely one-sidedly. All in all still an interesting story though.

Feel like the demonstration of physical supremacy is tempting fate since we just saw the Jailbreak King get Yuugi on side a few chapters back. Not sure if it'll be a blindside or a proper brawl but I bet she and Byakuren are going to end up throwing down.

Might be a bureaucratic mix-up? Ooooh, then the question would be which sociable girl is the hidden villainess, and did she switch the forms herself.

As is often the case it is amusing to picture Sakuya seeing Meiling doing handstand push-ups, stopping time to crawl under her, taking a casual pose and smoothing out her clothes before un-pausing things and just basically being there like 'Hey.'

Don't think I'd heard that ship name before, but I guess it tracks. "There's some things brute force can't solve, but for everything else there's MasterCard."

I feel that the comedy will return, now that our main character's past has been handled, more or less. And I wouldn't call this pure sadness so much as bittersweet. It sucks for Aki and Koharu that it had to be this particular way, but they're both moving forward as best they can.

Legit brought me to tears.

And on a more goofy note, you can't call the stick treat thingies hocky and not have the toe at the end, c'mon!

Forgive me, the opportunity was too perfect.

Seems she doesn't appreciate when she is the one tattled on.

So let's see, we got names for the Chens, I think. Correct me if those were shown earlier and I missed it. Director is Chen Mo, actor/show host is Chen Qingyan. We also get confirmation that Youzi punching that boy really did put her mom's career in a precarious position, not just her conflating separate matters.

I'm also glad for a little fleshing out of Xiao Pei. If I'm completely honest in the starting handful of chapters I was kinda expecting her to be another romance option for Youji at some point. Course, I dropped that as the Ren train built up steam; but that aside it's still nice to see the loyal assistant types getting a smidgeon of focus rather than being just -there-.

Healthy relationships need reciprocity, it can't just be one person doing all the taking care of the other. And these two have been together a long time, so it figures they've reached a good balance.

Marisa's intentions are vague enough to support either interpretation. Will she end up remaining an ordinary magician until she dies of human lifespan/frailty, or find a method of immortality she likes enough to commit to?

And if that means she does become a youkai, is there a statute of limitations on being born a human in the human village such that a decade or two spent as a crazy forest witch first would make it acceptable? It's rather nebulous and open to speculation.

I find this work interesting because of the inclusion of Marisa's usually absent mother. It seems to have her find out that Reimu specifically ended her late enough in life that they were already friends and she already understood how things work. So instead of any long term efforts to avenge that, Marisa takes a 'that's just how things are' mentality. If she continues on her path long enough, she and her best friend will have to fight to the death over it and that's just life. As far as angst goes, it comes across as a very dry sort. She's not dreading that day nor trying to make the most of the time before it, merely acknowledging the inevitable before progressing as she otherwise would.